All it's quacked up to be

Owen Heitmann

Despite being one of the finest and most influential comic-book artists of the 20th century, Carl Barks was never allowed to sign his best-known work.

His thrilling and funny stories were read by millions and influenced the likes of filmmaker George Lucas (who acknowledged that Raiders of the Lost Ark's opening scene was inspired by a Barks comic) but as a creator, Barks remained anonymous. The reason? His protagonist was Donald Duck and Disney policy forbade crediting individual artists. Fans knew him only as ''the Good Duck Artist'' - a descriptive sobriquet emphasising that his style transcended the franchise.

Fits the bill ... one of Barks's most popular comics, Lost in the Andes, is the lead story in this inaugural volume.

Unlike many great creators, Barks was prolific, sometimes writing, pencilling and inking as many as 40 pages a month. From the early 1940s until his retirement in 1966, the former Disney animator created more than 500 comic-book stories starring Donald and his nephews Huey, Dewey and Louie, as well as memorable characters single-handedly invented by Barks: notably Donald's wealthy uncle Scrooge McDuck but also the preternaturally lucky Gladstone Gander, inventor Gyro Gearloose and villains such as the Beagle Boys, Flintheart Glomgold and Magica De Spell. His Uncle Scrooge character later formed the basis for the popular animated TV series DuckTales, which adapted many of his comic books.

Barks's output has been reprinted often but either piecemeal in flimsy monthly comics or in high-priced collector's editions. This book, covering the years 1948-49, is the first in a planned 30-volume Barks library that will reprint his entire duck oeuvre in durable, affordable hardcovers.

The continuing popularity of tales of talking waterfowl might surprise the uninitiated but the secret is Barks ''never thought of them as ducks'' and wrote about them as if they were human. ''They just happened to be humans who looked like ducks,'' he said.

Lost in the Andes, the lead story in this inaugural volume, is one of Carl's most popular comics. In it, Donald and his nephews embark on a quest for square eggs, leading to a hidden valley in the Andes where everything is square - even the people! It is a seamless combination of absurdism, slapstick and pulp perils and exemplifies the long adventure yarns (typically about 30 pages) that Barks is often associated with (three more are reprinted in this book).

Advertisement

However, Barks was also a master of tightly written short comedies. His regular 10-page lead stories in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories drove circulation to reach more than 3 million copies a month, making it the top-selling comic book to date.

You will now receive updates fromEntertainment Newsletter

Entertainment Newsletter

Among the nine 10-pagers in this book, The Sunken Yacht is testament to Barks's inventiveness. In 1964, Danish inventor Karl Kroyer was denied a Dutch patent for a method of raising sunken ships, reportedly because this story had shown a substantially similar method 15 years earlier.

But it's Managing the Echo System that best demonstrates Barks's talent for screwball comedy. A ludicrous set-up sees Donald's nephews charging money for echoes, leading to an escalating war as Donald stubbornly tries to make sounds that are increasingly difficult to mimic.

The over-the-top competition is ridiculous but also hilarious, with Barks's expressive art wringing every laugh from the situation.

The book is completed by several one-page gags and a series of critical essays, some of which spill over into pretentious academia. That said, the stories do deserve analysis.

Above all, Barks's Duckburg rings true because of his cynical world view. He rarely plastered on the sentimentality that dogs other Disney creations. The saccharine ''Spirit of Christmas'' ending of The Golden Christmas Tree in this volume - a story otherwise driven by consumerism, slapstick violence and a witch who wants to destroy every Christmas tree on Earth - was forced on Barks by his editors and he later commented, ''I still wince at the preachy stuff I had to put in''.

Although there are moral values in Barks's stories, he was never didactic and never wrote down to his readers. In his words, ''I always tried to write a story that I wouldn't mind buying myself''.